Do Our Bodies Have A 'Set Weight'

Say someone is obese. They change their diet. They lose a ton of weight. They stick to their diet. The weight keeps coming off. Does your body finally alert itself to stop dropping weight at some point? Keep in mind that the person is not starving themselves.
If someone was 300 lbs. They go down to 180lbs. Then 150lbs. Then 135lbs. and so on, does the body say 'enough!'? If we do have a 'set weight' it'd be great to know what it in fact is.

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I don't know. For myself, I think there's a weight range that's easiest (and realistic) for me to maintain.

A long while ago, there was a diet book called "The Set Point Diet" that promulgated such a theory.

Someone who has a disorder causing them to lose to much weight or who is dying of malnutrition will die at or before that person shrinks down below what you might be calling a 'set weight'.

You need to eat a certain amount of food per day to maintain a healthy body weight. The point behind a diet is to eat less than that so the body will use it's own fat stores to make up the difference.
Once you reach that ideal weight, you go on a "maintenance" diet where you consume more food than you did while on the diet, but theoretically only just enough to maintain that healthy weight, and not gain more.
That's the thinking, anyway.

Since 90% of people who do lose that much weight gain it all back, I have to say I think there probably is a 'natural' weight and its pointless to struggle against it. Better to spend your time and energy learning to accept and live as healthily as possible while being obese.

After a while your weight plateaus. You will not waste away due to diet and exercise. If your diet is 2000 calories per day, you will continue losing weight until that diet reaches its 'plateau'.

What R6 said. If you're actively dieting and exercising, your body eventually will get used to that and you will have to modify what you've been doing in order to lose.

My sticky points are 205, 178, 163, 152, and 140.
At those weights, I eat what I please and don't gain or lose. It took a shitload of resistance training and cardio to move down from one plateau to another - though the 140 weight was lack of appetite due to stress and it only lasted for a few months.
After ten years of weighing 163 I've creeped up to 178 fat and sluggish. I refuse to buy new pants so I have tires of lard hanging over the sides of my pants. I now wear clothing to shave and brush my teeth so I don't have to look at my fat body in the mirror.

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Yes they have a set weight, that is why during the Siege of Leningrad when for 400 days no food entered the city, no one lost any weight.
And when the Germans refused to feed the concentration camp detainees they also didn't lose any weight.

WTF r9????? Do you have any idea stupid you are??
The concentration camp PRISONERS were walking skeletons, and many, many of them DID die from starvation! Take a look at this picture of some survivors taken when the camps were liberated and tell me if you think they "didn't lose any weight". Same thing with the citizens of Leningrad.
You are horrifying in your ignorance.

[quote]Say someone is obese. They change their diet. They lose a ton of weight. They stick to their diet. The weight keeps coming off. Does your body finally alert itself to stop dropping weight at some point? Keep in mind that the person is not starving themselves.
Surely the person's obesity is not reason enough to use a plural pronoun.

Today is R10's first day on Datalounge.

There is actually - not in the way you are thinking. Say you weight 300 pounds and you lose 100 pounds. Your body will want to go back to that 300 pounds so you will have a lower BMR than someone who has been 200 lbs. Almost 20%. So if they can eat 2000 calories and not gain weight you would have to eat 1800 to maintain that weight. This is controlled by the hormone Leptin. Studies right now are administering leptin to help return that balance but it is in trials right now.

Holy crap, R10. You can't seriously have missed that R9 was being sarcastic.

I don't see anything in r9's post that comes across as sarcastic. Perhaps that is because I have encountered that very same abysmal ignorance when I worked for the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.
And I'm being kind by calling it "ignorance".

Was it volunteer work, R15?

LMFAO

r10 has the mentality of Michael Phelps and probably the face too, without the body and bank account of course.

[quote]I don't see anything in [R9]'s post that comes across as sarcastic
I thought it is freakin obvious

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The person isn't on a diet, but changed their lifestyle completely.

OP

While OP attempts to use English to express irrational and ridiculous thoughts better left circulating through that sewer drain she calls a mind, her sister, R10, expressed outrage at a joke and assembles documentation that, YES, INDEED! starving people DO lose wait. You know, before they die.
Who can question the entertainment value of $18 a year. Even in a world where you can look out the window and see Afghan hounds shit for free?

I think so, OP.
Of course, that "set point" can creep up over time due to age or hormones. That's why it's so hard to lose that last 10 or 15 lbs.
I can lose it but if I stop working out or even cut my workout down to 1 hour a day, it comes right back.
Frustrating as hell.